An expert on racism in the north, who has strong opinions on Michigan's recent affirmative action discussions, will be the keynote speaker for the 2006 Bouma Lecture at Calvin College.

Thomas Sugrue, a native of Detroit, will speak at 3:30 pm on Monday, May 1 in Gezon Auditorium in a talk that is free and open to all.

Sugrue is the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

His landmark book on Detroit, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, was recently named by Princeton University Press as one of its 100 most influential books of the past 100 years.

His upcoming talk at Calvin will draw from his forthcoming book, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Unfinished Struggle for Racial Equality in the North.

He will discuss the largely unknown Northern battlegrounds where grassroots activists fought to end discrimination and segregation: the rapidly expanding postwar suburbs.

Says Calvin College urban studies professor Mark Mulder: ""A lot of attention has been given to the heroic battles for civil rights in the south - and rightly so. However, Sugrue's forthcoming book and talk at Calvin turns our attention to the suburbs of northern cities and focuses our attention on those who fought to open those communities to people of all races. We tend to think of suburbs as monolithically white, but Sugrue recounts a more complex story."

Sugrue is a specialist in 20th-century American politics, urban history and race relations.

In additon to The Origins of the Urban Crisis he has written The New Suburban History. He also has published over 30 articles in such places as the Journal of American History, Journal of Urban History and the Michigan Journal of Race.

His essay Affirmative Action from Below was published in The Best American History Essays 2006, a collection of 10 essays selected from over 300 journals.

A recent Detroit Free Press story on Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm's push to protect affirmative action policies in the state included comments from Sugrue.

The Freep story noted that: "Michigan voters will decide in November whether the state should ban government affirmative action programs that give preferential treatment to individuals or groups based on their race, color, ethnicity, gender or national origin."

Sugrue said: "We cannot continue to sweep the problems of segregation and discrimination under the rug."